HUMAN CESSPOOLS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 314, 14 February 1910, Page 4

HUMAN CESSPOOLS

STRAIGHT TALK FROM THE PULPIT. Preaching last night in the Whiteley Church, the Rev. j. G. Chapman said some straight things to those people who are always looking for evil in others. Inter alia lie said: •• The crookedness which we see in oilier people, may in reality he in ourselves. When jealousy, suspicion, and hatred dwell in the heart, they communicate a malicious significance to everything that another may do. I have heard people say that Xew Plymouth is the worst place for scandal they have ever been in. It is a pity the Borough Council cannot make a bye-law to hang up , !V erv scandal-monger by the tongue; we should soon have a diminished popula tion. Some people .seem to think that when they bear something unsavoury about another it is their bounden duty to go immediately and tell their neighbors about it. We have many societies in New Plymouth inaugurated for the well-being of the community; but if some lady of social standing would start a society for the suppression of wicked scandal in the town, she would immortalise her name as' a public benefactress'. I know no more wicked and cruel thing than to defame the failcharacter of another. Some people are fond of this kind of thing: they revel in it, and become like human cesspools into which all the filthy scandal of the community may be east. No language is too strong for these vampires wno feed upon the characters of others. I have heard from time to time scandalous reports -about people, which reports turned out to have no foundation of truth in them. Fair white character.* have been smirched by some whos* tastes are so depraved that nothing will satisfy their unwholesome appetites but the most scandalous food."